Event makes Hall of fame
By Andre Webster | June 10, 2009 12:00am
JENNY Hall walks solemnly along a Gold Coast beach, with her miniature dachshund, staring vacantly into the distance. "I wanted a fresh start," she tells women's glossy New Idea. "I never wanted this to come up again."
But it has.
And if the hum around town is correct, Hall has relived the incident involving Sharks boss Tony Zappia which left her with a black eye and ruined her life for the handsome sum of $50,000 - paid by Channel 7 and Pacific Magazines.
The media blitzkrieg against Zappia entered day three yesterday when Seven News spirited Hall from her new life on the Gold Coast and plonked her in front of Sharkies Leagues Club.
As this tawdry episode plays out - in the week league celebrates the contribution of women - few are showering themselves in glory.
Jenny Hall included. Her cautionary tale has turned into a cautionary mini-series. What's next? Stay tuned.
Make no mistake: Zappia hardly deserves our sympathy. As it stands, he has assaulted a female staff member, refused her sick leave, shown her a pornographic email and then jokingly asked her to "spank" him to defuse the situation.
Huh? These are actions not befitting the chief executive of a football club, especially one who deplored Greg Bird for glassing girlfriend Katie Milligan.
"He is a football manager - not a chief executive," is a line widely uttered by other bosses in Club Land. Zappia's ham-fisted handling of this incident suggests the theory is right.
It has emerged he is being advised by leading manager John Fordham, who is not representing Zappia but attended his meeting with lawyers in the city yesterday in his capacity as a friend.
Zappia could do with a heavy hitter in his corner because there is more chance he will resume his first job working at Centrelink than filling Denis Fitzgerald's vacant chair at Parramatta. Zappia has acted deplorably.
But Hall's media strategy smacks of opportunism and scepticism continues to grow about her motives.
There are firm whispers she had asked the club for $50,000 when the parties settled the matter in April. It was only prepared to pay $20,000 and Hall accepted it.
There is also talk that Bird's manager, Gavin Orr, had pieced together her lucrative media deals. "I have never met the girl," he insisted last night. Yet Seven and New Idea would not deny that Hall had been paid. Seven spokesman Simon Francis rejected the $50,000 figure. But asked if she had been paid any sum, he said: "There is nothing more we can add."
Other parts of her story don't line up. She says she has broken her silence after the Four Corners report detailing a group sex incident involving Sharks players in 2002.
NRL suits have been calling her for three weeks after images of her blackened eye were published in a Sydney newspaper - yet she only made contact yesterday.
She whizzed from shooting on location in the Shire to meet with NRL boss David Gallop. Seven, predictably, were waiting outside.
If she wants to change the culture of a club and a code, why has she done it with a sledgehammer in prime-time over three nights?
One suspects it isn't about change but retribution. In the end, someone has to pay.
